Your firm is sitting on stories that you’re not telling. They tell the tales of the people, designs, and work that goes into shaping the built environment. The narratives are compelling, and the folks you want to work with and for you are eager to hear them.

Yet, most A/E/C firms leave these stories on the shelf. They never see the light of day once a project is wrapped. But if they’re leveraged, they can be used to win new work, enhance your expertise, and attract the people you want to work at your organization.

Good storytelling comes in all shapes and forms, but we’ll focus on three types you can start incorporating into your marketing strategy.

• The customer story – Or case studies, as they’re traditionally known, give voice to the customer experience, how they came to work with you, and the outcomes you delivered together
• The community story – How the work you’re doing impacts your local community and beyond
• The firm’s story – The stories behind the people inside your firm, what makes them invested in the work, and how they’re playing a role in living out your company’s values and mission

Let’s break each down, how to put them together, and where to use them.

The Customer Story

The customer story is about your client. They’re the main characters, not you or your firm. You’re there to support them.

The crux of a good customer is the conversation you have with a client. It’s their words, direct quotes, that give weight to the narratives.

You’ve likely read plenty of case studies that follow the same formula:

• Problem
• Solution
• Outcome

By interviewing the client, you’ll unpack details that are far more interesting while still hitting those three case study pillars. The problem, solution, and outcome will organically emerge in the story instead of being forced to fit those criteria.

To create a compelling client story, you need to interview well. Ask questions like:

• When did you realize you’d made the right decision hiring our firm?
• Tell me about a time when things didn’t go as planned during your project. How was it handled?

Customer story length can vary. When written, they’re well-suited for long-form content. This gives them plenty of opportunity to be repurposed as social posts, condensed as leave-behinds for business development staff, and included in the statement of qualifications packages.

The Community Story

For firms handling public work, the customer story and community story may overlap. Your work designing or building a fire station benefits the firefighters who work there, but it also serves as a storm shelter, impacting the community at large.

Most people walk around the built environment and use it daily without ever knowing the minds and hands that were behind putting it all together. Community stories give your firm the opportunity to share the work you’ve done and elevate your brand in the public sphere.

Ask yourself (or the stakeholders you’re working with) these questions to help form a community story:

• What are some concrete ways the public has benefitted from this project?
• Do we have any data on how things have changed for the better since the project was finished?
• How did the public support the project?

A/E/C firms do a lot of public good. And it’s important to share how you impact people in a positive way. While maybe not as lengthy as a customer story, a community story can still be great written content and lends itself to be shared on social platforms.

The Firm Story

The hardest story of the three to tell is likely your own. The firm story isn’t just what goes on your firm’s history or about us page. These are the stories of how work is done in your firm. They’re about the people and the conversations that happen inside your office. They give a glimpse into what it’s like when your team develops an idea and it becomes a reality.

Those stories are the ones that shape your firm’s culture and make you who you are. And this matters to prospective clients. It also matters to the people who want to work at your firm.

The firm story gives them a look into what life will be like partnering with or joining you.

Here are a few questions to guide you in putting together a firm story:

• What’s a moment or project that really showcased our team’s unique abilities?
• What’s different or special about the personalities of our people?
• Describe a moment when your team was really proud of what they did.

When told genuinely, these stories endear the right people to you. They do well in blog post form and on social media. And if you have the budget and capacity, video and photos make these even better. Your firm’s stories make you more human in a world where it’s increasingly difficult to separate machine and human creativity.

Storytelling Leads to Great Outcomes Across Your Firm

Your firm has lots of stories that aren’t being told. When you can group them into categories like these, it’s easier to identify what you can tell and how to approach them without getting overwhelmed.

When incorporated and distributed correctly, these stories can help you win more work, build your brand, and land more of the right people to support your firm.

Ben Culbreth is a content strategist and copywriter and the only one who shows up for work at Culbreth Copywriting LLC. He helps A/E/C firms land more of the clients they want through marketing workshops and training, leading brand messaging and content strategies and writing copy for websites and customer stories. You can read his words and see his work at benjaminculbreth.com.

Five key considerations every A/E/C marketer should include in their next kickoff meeting to ensure a smoother pursuit process.

Proposals may never receive the time and resources they deserve. However, cross-team collaboration equally depends on engineers and marketers to deliver quality submissions that win the projects that keep their companies running.

Project engineers and technical leaders wear many hats. They’re expected to be billable, attend client meetings, deliver successful projects, mentor young engineers, network, and volunteer with professional organizations. So, it’s no surprise that they struggle with time management and marketing meetings get pushed … and pushed to the last minute.

While successful pursuits depend on countless variables, a marketing-engineering pair can reduce back-and-forth, avoid late-minute revisions, and meet deadlines by setting boundaries and getting to the heart of the proposal at kickoff. Below are five key considerations every A/E/C marketer should include in their next kickoff meeting to ensure a smoother pursuit process.

1) Set a Flexible Schedule

It’s easy to make verbal commitments at the kickoff meeting only to fall through on them when other priorities arise. That’s why it’s valuable to establish a schedule that considers the technical and marketing teams’ commitments from the beginning. Inevitably, schedules will shift. Some proposals require more work than others, needing additional brainstorming, revisions, and time to develop proposal content. Both marketers and engineers have to anticipate and be amenable to shifting deadlines or adding an extra draft. To account for this, your initial schedule should feature a buffer for each milestone and include follow-up meetings to protect your progress.

2) Dig Deep

Your team is responding to Request for Proposals (RFPs) that rarely contain all the project details. Sometimes, the engineering team has valuable insider knowledge they don’t think to share with marketing. As marketing professionals brainstorm how to make their proposals stand out, asking engineers questions like the ones below can quickly uncover their company’s edge.

1. Have you talked to the client before?
2. Who’s the competition, and how do we differentiate ourselves?
3. What are the project’s key drivers?
4. What does the client care about?

These qualitative questions aim to align the technical and marketing teams around the client’s “why,” centering the proposal’s messaging, strategy, and relevant technical information from day one.

3) Establish a Decision Maker

Marketing relies on the technical team to make decisions for the proposal process to progress. But decisions can hang in the balance when more than one person has the final say, leaving proposal writing in gridlock. Assigning one person to be the ultimate decision maker at the kickoff (typically the technical lead, the future project manager, or the proposal manager) cuts through the semantics that delay proposal writing. This role is responsible for making a choice at the end of every meeting, such as picking which graphics best display your message.

4) One Topic Per Meeting

Follow-up meetings are usually the most effective form of communication for gathering technical information. However, getting technical staff on the call can be difficult, especially if the meeting’s purpose is vague. To encourage engineer participation and clarify their role on the call, focus on one page or section of the proposal per meeting. This practice can also decipher who is (and isn’t) needed on the call and keep these meetings brief.

5) Set Internal Deadlines

This one is project- and company-dependent, but the marketing team can set scheduling boundaries with engineering from the start by establishing internal deadlines and revision limits. This practice gives engineering a timeline while making space for the marketing team to arrange the final draft, submit it, and move on to another pursuit.

Try It Out

The proposal process will always be a balancing act. However, A/E/C marketers can maximize their time with the technical team by establishing boundaries, getting to the core of a proposal, and setting expectations early on. Ideally, incorporating these practices from the kickoff meeting to submittal will result in more proposals the team is proud of, fewer late nights at the office, and more wins for the company.

Article written by Archana Sharma, PE, PMP, ENV SP, LEED AP, and Andrew Dugan, PE.

Archana Sharma is the water market leader and senior project manager at Mead & Hunt, leading business development in Texas. She is experienced in the design and delivery of municipal water and wastewater infrastructure projects in the US. She serves as the delegate-at-large for the Water Environment Federation and as a board member and committee leader for the Public Communications and Outreach and DEI committees at the Water Environment Association of Texas.

Andrew Dugan runs WaterWrites, a utility-focused copywriting and creative agency. He helps technology companies, engineering firms, and utilities communicate their work to any audience. Andrew actively volunteers with the Water Environment Federation and is the editor of Rocky Mountain Water Magazine.